Interaction in the classroom increases attention and enhances learning. Many modern classrooms now employ polling to increase student participation and interest. Polling can also be designed to collect instant feedback from students, so a teacher can adapt the teaching pace.
Most classroom polling systems have students use personal response system “clickers” to respond to poll questions. A personal response system is one which allows instructors to pose questions to students which students can answer by entering a response into their clicker device.
There are many types of clicker devices employed in personal response systems to date. For example, hardware clicker devices exist which typically have a keyboard with or without a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). These hardware clicker devices also have a receiver which is typically either an infrared (IR) receiver or a radio frequency (RF) receiver. Infrared receivers typically operate via line of sight and have a more limited range than RF receivers. Infrared receivers are not portable, and typically have to be installed in a class room. RF receivers are more popular and can support a larger number of clickers than can an IR receiver.
Besides hardware clicker devices, virtual clicker devices also exist. Virtual clickers are created by installing clicker software on a laptop computer or other computing device which lets the device act as a clicker device. For example, most virtual clickers employ a web-based poll response keypad that is downloadable from a web or other site. Virtual clickers do not need a receiver because typically a web service is used to send a response to a poll question over the Internet. With the revolution of mobile technology and the increasing penetration of laptops and mobile phones among students, it has become popular to use mobile devices as virtual clickers for polling in schools.